Real work required back in demanding olden days

March 16, 2008

The old-timer growled after watching the boy make breakfast. "Things have sure changed since I was a boy," he said. The boy looked up from his recently zapped sausage muffin. He said nothing, but he squinted his eyes as he listened to the old-timer. "Back in my day," the old-timer continued, "We didn't have touch pads on our microwaves. No sirree! We had real buttons. Buttons that you had to push! None of this wimpy touch pad stuff." He sighed and shook his head. "You kids have life too easy," he said. "All this remote control business. Why, when I was your age, I had to walk all the way across the room to turn a dial if I wanted to change channels. Then, I had to walk all the way back to the couch." "What's a dial?" the boy asked. The old-timer was stunned, but he gathered himself together. "It's a wheel-shaped knob that you turn. Like on a radio." "Radio?" "A radio was like your iPod, but you couldn't choose as much what you wanted to hear." "Wow!" said the boy. "And we couldn't choose more than four or five TV shows either." "Life must have been really hard back then!" said the boy. The old-timer nodded. "I'll say! Living was rugged. If we wanted to wipe the table, we couldn't just pull out a disinfectant wipe. We'd have to take a rag, go all the way to the sink, turn on the faucet, soak the rag, add a dab of dish soap and then wipe the table." The boy's eyes grew wide. "And if we wanted to open a car window, we couldn't just push a button." "No? What did you do?" the boy asked. "There was a crank. Kind of like your bike pedal. And we'd have to turn it 'round and 'round. It was work to open and close car windows, let me tell you!" The boy stared silently, in awe. "Back in my day, " the old-timer continued, "it called for patience to take and develop photos. We couldn't snap pictures from phones. Unless you had Polaroid - and that was expensive - photography wasn't instant. You used film! If you were lucky, you had a film cartridge. After you took 12 pictures you brought your film to the drugstore and you waited a week for prints. Then, half were blurry and the other half had heads cut off. Life was hard!" The boy shook his head in wonder. "You kids have it too easy," the man chided. "Why, you don't even have to push open store doors." "You had to push them open? With your hands?" "That's right. And we had to take a pen and sign credit card receipts. None of this swiping business. 'Swiping' meant taking stuff that didn't belong to you. “You don't even know what hard work is anymore. In the old days, if we wanted a pencil sharpened, we didn't just stick it in a hole. We had to turn the sharpener blade with a crank." "That doesn't sound too fun," said the boy. "Life wasn't fun. Let me tell you! It was hard. We had to wait for a videotape to rewind before we could watch a new show. We had to wait while store clerks shot items with a laser gun instead of just dragging them across a scanner. You don't know how easy it is you have it." The boy finished his muffin and looked up at the old timer with new-found respect - and a hint of a smile. Donna Marmorstein writes and lives in Aberdeen. You can contact her at dkmarmorstein@yahoo.com.